"I have "Italians" (the North American version) and they've overwintered
outdoors in a single 10-frame deep for four winters now."

I have Minnesota Hygienics which are Italians.  I have wintered nucs in under ten frames just fine.  In the past I have had ferals which looked Italian that you were lucky to get up to 20 frames before they swarmed and which always wintered in small clusters.  Charles experience is mainly with a variety of commercial queens, often bred for things like early build up and almond pollination.  It is pretty easy to expect such bees are going to differ a lot from the mutts often kept by back yard bee keepers or from bees with some selection for mite or AFB resistance like VSH or MH queens.  If you step back and take a look at queen breeding practices in the US for the last 100 years you should expect to see different phenotype characteristics from different queen strains, depending on what the breeder has selected for.  However, it is also reasonable to see little relationship between such characteristics and color.

Dick

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